Pasolini – Film Review by Frank L.

Directed Abel Ferrara

Stars: Willem Dafoe, Riccardo Scamarcio, Ninetto Davoli

Pier Paolo Pasolini was murdered in 1975. Precisely what happened is not free from doubt. His body was found on a beach near Rome, Pasolini’s own Alfa Romeo having been driven over it. A young hustler, with whom Pasolini had had dinner, confessed to the killing. However almost thirty years later he retracted his confession and implicated three other young men. Therefore mystery surrounds the murder of Pasolini. Ferrara sets the film in the last days of Pasolini’s life. He was working away at a novel, which the critics say is more or less unreadable and finishing the film “Salo”.

To blend these last days into a coherent narrative was never going to be easy as the daily trivia of even important people’s lives is just that trivia. So while a lot of the set pieces of having lunch with his Mother and supper in a local restaurant make for engaging viewing they reveal little more than that Pasolini was a sophisticated, erudite man who kept a good table. However that is not much of a revelation about him or many other Italians for that matter .Willem Dafoe is cast as Pasolini and he certainly looks the part. The elegant urban shabbiness of Rome of 40 years ago is captured. It almost breathes. But the clips from his films and quotations from his writings make the film less than easy to follow unless the viewer is very well acquainted with Pasolini’s oeuvre. Not being so familiar there was a sense of being out on a limb. However to the credit of the Irish Film Institute they have since 5th September been showing several of Pasolini’s films and these may well assist in helping to grasp more thoroughly this film.